[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
up the Yukon to Dawson. Call it a rough thousand from here.'
Weatherbee and Cuthfert groaned in chorus.
'How long'll that take, Baptiste?'
The half-breed figured for a moment. 'Workum like hell, no man play out, ten-
twenty- forty- fifty days. Um babies come' (designating the Incapables), 'no
can tell. Mebbe when hell freeze over; mebbe not then.'
The manufacture of snowshoes and moccasins ceased. Somebody called the name of
an absent member, who came out of an ancient cabin at the edge of the campfire
and joined them. The cabin was one of the many mysteries which lurk in the
vast recesses of the North. Built when and by whom, no man could tell. Two
graves in the open, piled high with stones, perhaps contained the secret of
those early wanderers. But whose hand had piled the stones?
The moment had come. Jacques Baptiste paused in the fitting of a harness and
pinned the struggling dog in the snow. The cook made mute protest for delay,
threw a handful of bacon into a noisy pot of beans, then came to attention.
Page 22
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
Sloper rose to his feet. His body was a ludicrous contrast to the healthy
physiques of the Incapables.
Yellow and weak, fleeing from a South American fever-hole, he had not broken
his flight across the zones, and was still able to toil with men. His weight
was probably ninety pounds, with the heavy hunting knife thrown in, and his
grizzled hair told of a prime which had ceased to be. The fresh young muscles
of either Weatherbee or
Cuthfert were equal to ten times the endeavor of his; yet he could walk them
into the earth in a day's journey. And all this day he had
whipped his stronger comrades into venturing a thousand miles of the stiffest
hardship man can conceive. He was the incarnation of the unrest of his race,
and the old Teutonic stubbornness, dashed with the quick grasp and action of
the Yankee, held the flesh in the bondage of the spirit.
'All those in favor of going on with the dogs as soon as the ice sets, say
ay.'
'Ay!' rang out eight voices- voices destined to string a trail of oaths along
many a hundred miles of pain.
'Contrary minded?'
'No!' For the first time the Incapables were united without some compromise of
personal interests.
'And what are you going to do about it?' Weatherbee added belligerently.
'Majority rule! Majority rule!' clamored the rest of the party.
'I know the expedition is liable to fall through if you don't come,'
Sloper replied sweetly; 'but I guess, if we try real hard, we can manage to do
without you. What do you say, boys?'
The sentiment was cheered to the echo.
'But I say, you know,' Cuthfert ventured apprehensively; 'what's a chap like
me to do?'
'Ain't you coming with us.'
'No- o.'
'Then do as you damn well please. We won't have nothing to say.'
'Kind o' calkilate yuh might settle it with that canoodlin'
pardner of yourn,' suggested a heavy-going Westerner from the Dakotas, at the
same time pointing out Weatherbee. 'He'll be shore to ask yuh what yur a-goin'
to do when it comes to cookin' an' gatherin' the wood.'
'Then we'll consider it all arranged,' concluded Sloper. 'We'll pull out
tomorrow, if we camp within five miles- just to get everything in running
order and remember if we've forgotten anything.'
The sleds groaned by on their steel-shod runners, and the dogs strained low in
the harnesses in which they were born to die.
Jacques Baptiste paused by the side of Sloper to get a last glimpse of the
cabin. The smoke curled up pathetically from the Yukon stovepipe. The two
Incapables were watching them from the doorway.
Sloper laid his hand on the other's shoulder.
'Jacques Baptiste, did you ever hear of the Kilkenny cats?'
The half-breed shook his head.
'Well, my friend and good comrade, the Kilkenny cats fought till
neither hide, nor hair, nor yowl, was left. You understand?- till nothing was
left. Very good. Now, these two men don't like work.
They'll be all alone in that cabin all winter- a mighty long, dark winter.
Kilkenny cats- well?'
The Frenchman in Baptiste shrugged his shoulders, but the Indian in him was
silent. Nevertheless, it was an eloquent shrug, pregnant with prophecy.
Things prospered in the little cabin at first. The rough badinage of their
Page 23
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
comrades had made Weatherbee and Cuthfert conscious of the mutual
responsibility which had devolved upon them; besides, there was not so much
work after all for two healthy men. And the removal of the cruel whiphand, or
in other words the bulldozing half-breed, had brought with it a joyous
reaction. At first, each strove to outdo the other, and they performed petty
tasks with an unction which would have opened the eyes of their comrades who
were now wearing out bodies and souls on the Long Trail.
All care was banished. The forest, which shouldered in upon them from three
sides, was an inexhaustible woodyard. A few yards from their door slept the
Porcupine, and a hole through its winter robe formed a bubbling spring of
water, crystal clear and painfully cold.
But they soon grew to find fault with even that. The hole would persist in
freezing up, and thus gave them many a miserable hour of ice-chopping. The
unknown builders of the cabin had extended the sidelogs so as to support a
cache at the rear. In this was stored the bulk of the party's provisions. Food
there was, without stint, for three times the men who were fated to live upon
it. But the most of it was the kind which built up brawn and sinew, but did
not tickle the palate. True, there was sugar in plenty for two ordinary men;
but these two were little else than children. They early discovered the
virtues of hot water judiciously saturated with sugar, and they prodigally
swam their flapjacks and soaked their crusts in the rich, white syrup. Then
coffee and tea, and especially the dried fruits, made disastrous inroads upon
it. The first words they had were over the sugar question. And it is a really
serious thing when two men, wholly dependent upon each other for company,
begin to quarrel.
Weatherbee loved to discourse blatantly on politics, while Cuthfert, who had
been prone to clip his coupons and let the commonwealth jog on as best it
might, either ignored the subject or delivered himself of startling epigrams.
But the clerk was too obtuse to appreciate the clever shaping of thought, and
this waste of ammunition irritated
Cuthfert. He had been used to blinding people by his brilliancy, and
it worked him quite a hardship, this loss of an audience. He felt personally
aggrieved and unconsciously held his muttonhead companion responsible for it.
Save existence, they had nothing in common- came in touch on no single point.
Weatherbee was a clerk who had known naught but clerking all his life;
Cuthfert was a master of arts, a dabbler in oils, and had written not a
little. The one was a lower-class man who considered himself a gentleman, and
the other was a gentleman who knew himself to be such. From this it may be
remarked that a man can be a gentleman without possessing the first instinct
of true comradeship. The clerk was as sensuous as the other was aesthetic, and
his love adventures, told at great length and chiefly coined from his
imagination, affected the supersensitive master of arts in the same way as so
many whiffs of sewer gas. He deemed the clerk a filthy, uncultured brute,
whose place was in the muck with the swine, and told him so; and he was
reciprocally informed that he was a milk-and-water sissy and a cad.
Weatherbee could not have defined 'cad' for his life; but it satisfied its
purpose, which after all seems the main point in life.
Weatherbee flatted every third note and sang such songs as 'The
Boston Burglar' and 'the Handsome Cabin Boy,' for hours at a time, while
Cuthfert wept with rage, till he could stand it no longer and fled into the
outer cold. But there was no escape. The intense frost could not be endured
for long at a time, and the little cabin crowded them- beds, stove, table, and [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl rafalstec.xlx.pl
up the Yukon to Dawson. Call it a rough thousand from here.'
Weatherbee and Cuthfert groaned in chorus.
'How long'll that take, Baptiste?'
The half-breed figured for a moment. 'Workum like hell, no man play out, ten-
twenty- forty- fifty days. Um babies come' (designating the Incapables), 'no
can tell. Mebbe when hell freeze over; mebbe not then.'
The manufacture of snowshoes and moccasins ceased. Somebody called the name of
an absent member, who came out of an ancient cabin at the edge of the campfire
and joined them. The cabin was one of the many mysteries which lurk in the
vast recesses of the North. Built when and by whom, no man could tell. Two
graves in the open, piled high with stones, perhaps contained the secret of
those early wanderers. But whose hand had piled the stones?
The moment had come. Jacques Baptiste paused in the fitting of a harness and
pinned the struggling dog in the snow. The cook made mute protest for delay,
threw a handful of bacon into a noisy pot of beans, then came to attention.
Page 22
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
Sloper rose to his feet. His body was a ludicrous contrast to the healthy
physiques of the Incapables.
Yellow and weak, fleeing from a South American fever-hole, he had not broken
his flight across the zones, and was still able to toil with men. His weight
was probably ninety pounds, with the heavy hunting knife thrown in, and his
grizzled hair told of a prime which had ceased to be. The fresh young muscles
of either Weatherbee or
Cuthfert were equal to ten times the endeavor of his; yet he could walk them
into the earth in a day's journey. And all this day he had
whipped his stronger comrades into venturing a thousand miles of the stiffest
hardship man can conceive. He was the incarnation of the unrest of his race,
and the old Teutonic stubbornness, dashed with the quick grasp and action of
the Yankee, held the flesh in the bondage of the spirit.
'All those in favor of going on with the dogs as soon as the ice sets, say
ay.'
'Ay!' rang out eight voices- voices destined to string a trail of oaths along
many a hundred miles of pain.
'Contrary minded?'
'No!' For the first time the Incapables were united without some compromise of
personal interests.
'And what are you going to do about it?' Weatherbee added belligerently.
'Majority rule! Majority rule!' clamored the rest of the party.
'I know the expedition is liable to fall through if you don't come,'
Sloper replied sweetly; 'but I guess, if we try real hard, we can manage to do
without you. What do you say, boys?'
The sentiment was cheered to the echo.
'But I say, you know,' Cuthfert ventured apprehensively; 'what's a chap like
me to do?'
'Ain't you coming with us.'
'No- o.'
'Then do as you damn well please. We won't have nothing to say.'
'Kind o' calkilate yuh might settle it with that canoodlin'
pardner of yourn,' suggested a heavy-going Westerner from the Dakotas, at the
same time pointing out Weatherbee. 'He'll be shore to ask yuh what yur a-goin'
to do when it comes to cookin' an' gatherin' the wood.'
'Then we'll consider it all arranged,' concluded Sloper. 'We'll pull out
tomorrow, if we camp within five miles- just to get everything in running
order and remember if we've forgotten anything.'
The sleds groaned by on their steel-shod runners, and the dogs strained low in
the harnesses in which they were born to die.
Jacques Baptiste paused by the side of Sloper to get a last glimpse of the
cabin. The smoke curled up pathetically from the Yukon stovepipe. The two
Incapables were watching them from the doorway.
Sloper laid his hand on the other's shoulder.
'Jacques Baptiste, did you ever hear of the Kilkenny cats?'
The half-breed shook his head.
'Well, my friend and good comrade, the Kilkenny cats fought till
neither hide, nor hair, nor yowl, was left. You understand?- till nothing was
left. Very good. Now, these two men don't like work.
They'll be all alone in that cabin all winter- a mighty long, dark winter.
Kilkenny cats- well?'
The Frenchman in Baptiste shrugged his shoulders, but the Indian in him was
silent. Nevertheless, it was an eloquent shrug, pregnant with prophecy.
Things prospered in the little cabin at first. The rough badinage of their
Page 23
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
comrades had made Weatherbee and Cuthfert conscious of the mutual
responsibility which had devolved upon them; besides, there was not so much
work after all for two healthy men. And the removal of the cruel whiphand, or
in other words the bulldozing half-breed, had brought with it a joyous
reaction. At first, each strove to outdo the other, and they performed petty
tasks with an unction which would have opened the eyes of their comrades who
were now wearing out bodies and souls on the Long Trail.
All care was banished. The forest, which shouldered in upon them from three
sides, was an inexhaustible woodyard. A few yards from their door slept the
Porcupine, and a hole through its winter robe formed a bubbling spring of
water, crystal clear and painfully cold.
But they soon grew to find fault with even that. The hole would persist in
freezing up, and thus gave them many a miserable hour of ice-chopping. The
unknown builders of the cabin had extended the sidelogs so as to support a
cache at the rear. In this was stored the bulk of the party's provisions. Food
there was, without stint, for three times the men who were fated to live upon
it. But the most of it was the kind which built up brawn and sinew, but did
not tickle the palate. True, there was sugar in plenty for two ordinary men;
but these two were little else than children. They early discovered the
virtues of hot water judiciously saturated with sugar, and they prodigally
swam their flapjacks and soaked their crusts in the rich, white syrup. Then
coffee and tea, and especially the dried fruits, made disastrous inroads upon
it. The first words they had were over the sugar question. And it is a really
serious thing when two men, wholly dependent upon each other for company,
begin to quarrel.
Weatherbee loved to discourse blatantly on politics, while Cuthfert, who had
been prone to clip his coupons and let the commonwealth jog on as best it
might, either ignored the subject or delivered himself of startling epigrams.
But the clerk was too obtuse to appreciate the clever shaping of thought, and
this waste of ammunition irritated
Cuthfert. He had been used to blinding people by his brilliancy, and
it worked him quite a hardship, this loss of an audience. He felt personally
aggrieved and unconsciously held his muttonhead companion responsible for it.
Save existence, they had nothing in common- came in touch on no single point.
Weatherbee was a clerk who had known naught but clerking all his life;
Cuthfert was a master of arts, a dabbler in oils, and had written not a
little. The one was a lower-class man who considered himself a gentleman, and
the other was a gentleman who knew himself to be such. From this it may be
remarked that a man can be a gentleman without possessing the first instinct
of true comradeship. The clerk was as sensuous as the other was aesthetic, and
his love adventures, told at great length and chiefly coined from his
imagination, affected the supersensitive master of arts in the same way as so
many whiffs of sewer gas. He deemed the clerk a filthy, uncultured brute,
whose place was in the muck with the swine, and told him so; and he was
reciprocally informed that he was a milk-and-water sissy and a cad.
Weatherbee could not have defined 'cad' for his life; but it satisfied its
purpose, which after all seems the main point in life.
Weatherbee flatted every third note and sang such songs as 'The
Boston Burglar' and 'the Handsome Cabin Boy,' for hours at a time, while
Cuthfert wept with rage, till he could stand it no longer and fled into the
outer cold. But there was no escape. The intense frost could not be endured
for long at a time, and the little cabin crowded them- beds, stove, table, and [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]